I think even from MS's opinion the *POST* longhorn world will be WELL over 24 months.

Will Longhorn come out and have the features they are showing in its pre-alpha incarnation with your Devil's Advocate implication that Apple owns the rights to translucency and other cool effects?

If so...that would be great! "and other cool effects" and what might those be? Thanks in advance.

:: djmacdaddy ::

Mr. Enderle should attend the WWDC next month if he wants to know what direction Apple is moving to the following 12 months. After a whole week of attending sessions, he should then buy the WWDC-DVD's and watch every single session. Then maybe he will think differently and maybe he will stop writing nonsense.

the "genie effect" when minimizing or closing windows is another patent. Don't forget about the 3 panel media player (iTunes), the chrome windows, etc.. Apple probably has a few more we have not seen yet.

However, I am not an ambulance chaser so I don't know if patents will hold up in court.

Jobs will probably threaten a lawsuit, but allow M$ to use everything after BG and M$ infuses money into Apple and commit to support Office and VPC for the mac.

Jobs should get an Office and Exchange alternative, and block M$ from using everything.

Just because Apple is dying slowly doesn't mean it's not. Apple's death spiral is beginning to tighten this year, here's why:

1. Apple quality has fallen dramatically during the last year, iBook, Powerbook, G5, and iPod have suffered major quality problems.

2. Powerful, reliable, and inexpensive Linux machines are cleaning Apple's clock in high end digital graphics.

3. Now that Apple's market share is less than 2% Apple has reached a tipping point where developers will abandon the platform at an increasing rate.

Denying that the Mac is dying is delusional, maybe when Jobs exits Apple Mac zealots will see the obvious, until then I doubt it.

linux machines doing high end graphics? i dont think so, retard. 1. linux supports almost no video cards for 3D accelleration. 2. where is photoshop for linux? GIMP doesnt compare

apple quality? im sure youve purchased a mac lately and know so much about it. in my household we have purchased an imac in january and an ibook and everything is flawless. the fact is, most experiences are great, only few have problems with quality. you cant just say crap like this, im sure you dont own a mac from how you slam them down so much.

seriously, how do you know apples market share is below 2%? from reading rough estimates from articles? even if it is, you cant compare it with the entire PC market. this includes the cash registers using windows, which are quite abundant. this includes markets in which apple doesnt even compete, like the ultra-low end market. people who buy PCs just to "do email and internet". any piece of crap box can do that. and those machines don't make much money

just being profitable right now makes you a successful computer manufacterer. apple has been through a lot worse. unix developers are turning to apple as well as new developers from the windows world. apples are more compatible than ever and with technologies like the internet, java, flash, etc, cross platform development is becoming so much easier.

RC also previously posted that this quarter's dip in G5 sales means a death spiral. MORE PEOPLE BUY COMPUTERS BEFORE CHRISTMAS TIME. good one, idiot. plus, more people are looking foreward to G5 updates. plus, Q1 is never the strongest quarter in the first place.

in summary, why is RC here? im still unsure. what's he trying to prove? that he hates some company because they are doing somethign different. because apple takes risks, they are on their way to a death spiral. which is simply not true.

Too bad! Not only will developers abandon the Mac, but I ask you is the several hundred thousand G5s that have been sold in the last 7 months enough to keep the IBM Fishkill plant running? Is IBM getting any return on their investment on sales of the 970? If the 970 makes it to 3GHZ are G5 going to sell like Hotcakes at a church social?

Intel, Microsoft, AMD have all issued roads maps for thier respective products, and SJobs gives us silence and secrecy, and no comment, and how about that iPod?

What do you think?

The g5 is suffering from IBM's supply problems and that will be fixed.

But perhaps the biggest selling point for Macs just might be Longhorn by the price tag it carries---NEW HARDWARE! and prett high powred stuff at that. Some just might consider a Mac and I'd bet OS X will be a head of Longhorn in price and features along with not having the Microsoft p enalty if Longhorn even comes out in shat, 2007 as of now. There is also the possibility that Longhorn could become Microsofts' Copland.

Just so you know... Linux does do graphics; the computer animation in Titanic was done on Linux boxes.

Steve's other company Pixar uses mostly Renerman on Linux..

Strange, but true..

Quote

Guest wrote:
in summary, why is RC here? im still unsure. what's he trying to prove? that he hates some company because they are doing somethign different. because apple takes risks, they are on their way to a death spiral. which is simply not true.

It's probably just Rob Enderle that can't get enough

Apparently he has learned from his previous mistakes. Previously, he's predicted that Apple would be dead by the end of "this or next year"; now he's given himself over 5 years before he can be definitively proven to have been talking out his nether regions yet again.

Mr. Enderle:
In short, Apple slowly is becoming less and less of a Mac OS company and more and more a firm that will go where its customers want.

Hey, wait a minute! Customers are supposed to be people who buy/use Apple's products, right? So this basically means Apple should listen to non-Apple users, mostly Windows users I suppose.

Mr. Enderle:
It simply isn't moving fast enough.

And that's why M$ keeps copying Apple's concepts and nowadays lags behind more than ever. With Longhorn being renamed to LongWait, there may not be such a thing as "post-Longhorn world of Linux and Windows" before the end of the decade.

The only way I can match this with reality is that Mr. Enderle means he would like to see MacOSX on Intel hardware.

"Linux does do graphics; the computer animation in Titanic was done on Linux boxes."

Using dedicated software and a custom-built cluster. Along this line of reasoning you could also claim that any G5 owner owns a piece of the third (?) fastest supercomputer.

Quote

Guest wrote:
... but I ask you is the several hundred thousand G5s that have been sold in the last 7 months enough to keep the IBM Fishkill plant running? Is IBM getting any return on their investment on sales of the 970?

What do you think?

I think IBM makes more than the G5 at the Fishkill plant. Keep in mind that the entire console game market is now in IBM's hip pocket. (the Gamecube uses a PowerPC, the next playstation will use The Cell and now even Xbox2 will even be using a G5 derivative)

Also, don't forget that IBM uses the Power4 (what the G5 is based on) and soon Power5 in some of its own machines. IBM isn't sacrificing anything in making the G5 chips. It's safe to say they are getting their money's worth.

-Dan

Quote

Photodan wrote:
[... a bunch of things that were right on target.]

-Dan

Word.

Quote

Guest wrote:
in summary, why is RC here? im still unsure. what's he trying to prove?

He's here because even bigger idiots than himself answer his posts !! He's a troll ! He say exactly what he needs to say to make sure you answer exactly what he wants you to answer. I can't beleive that there are still people to bite the baits after this much time. Have you all only been to internet forums since last week ?!?

pfouu... sorry for the crudeness but I'm a bit tired of this. #1 rule of internet forums : don't feed the trolls

That's a good rule, Guest.

"I think IBM makes more than the G5 at the Fishkill plant. Keep in mind that the entire console game market is now in IBM's hip pocket. (the Gamecube uses a PowerPC, the next playstation will use The Cell and now even Xbox2 will even be using a G5 derivative)

Also, don't forget that IBM uses the Power4 (what the G5 is based on) and soon Power5 in some of its own machines. IBM isn't sacrificing anything in making the G5 chips. It's safe to say they are getting their money's worth.

-Dan"

Dan SO has this picture correct. I got near exactly the same info -- freely given by a senior member of that 970 chip development team. No fears, those IBM 970 (Apple branded G5s) chips won't be wasted. AND expect to see a LOT of them surfacing in IBMs products (other than just their blade servers) in the VERY near future . . .. and running Linux.

The exit strategy Apple has is to simply leverage more and more open standards and do less and less. Ten years go, Apple had its own processors, its own bus/motherboard architecture, its own operating system. No it has none of those, so it is only adding value with the "look and feel" the design of its interface. Well, that is well and good except guess what: those thing can easily be copied. I can get linux set up now with a dock bar, background, window decoration etc., that really look like the apple desktop, except that it does not use the actuall Apple trademark out of the box, of course but if I wanted to I could set those up too. This is why Apple is leaving the computer busness slowly transfering to the IPod and IMusic business.

The other thing to notice is that their use of a standard OS (which also, critically, runs on x86 architecture) enables them to, at some point in the future, migrate the Apple OS to PC hardware, which is clearly their long range plan, if they are in the PC business for the long range, that is.

Think about it. They would enormously lower their hardware costs, while still providing the MAC OS experience, while still proving the design in a classy translucent bow, but instead of special hardware in that box it would be super generic PC hardware. The value proposition here is far to powerful to pass up. Perdict this will be announced just after the Christmas buying season in 2005-2006.

Erich Friesen

Just wanted to make a few corrections, Guest/Eric, and to address your thoughts.

Apple never had its own processor, having used processors by, first, Motorola, and then Motorola and IBM, which is the case today.

Apple still uses its own motherboards.

Mac OS X is built on the Mach kernel (under the name of Darwin) and a BSD layer, but is chalk full of Apple-proprietary technologies. All of the things that make the Mac experience are proprietary Apple OS technologies. Apple also owns a crap load of patents that the company can use to block any commercial attempts to copy the OS.

While Darwin runs on x86, most of those many proprietary technologies do not. Apple could, of course, port most, if not all, of them to x86, but they are currently built to take advantage of the strengths of the PowerPC platform, including AltiVec.

As for the rest of your post, you may want to read all three of my pieces in this series as I dealt with most of your arguments there. The biggest one is explaining why the Mac experience could never be brought to an open-hardware market.